Port of Call: Kuala Lumpur

My wife and I are currently on a seven day Southeast Asia Cruise aboard the Mariner of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. On Jan. 23rd we docked at Port Klang, the port city that serves much of the province of Selangor in Malaysia including the capital city of Kuala Lumpur.

As is usually the case with cruises and their ports of call, various excursions were offered and we took one that took us to Kuala Lumpur itself, an hour and a half drive by bus. Here’s how our day went.

All those taking shore excursions met in the theatre at 8:15 and were assigned to various buses. We boarded and set off on our journey. Our guide was a chatty Malay fellow, not always easy to understand with his heavily accented English, but we could pick up most of it.

We passed development after development of relatively new row housing. Our guide told us that many of these developments were designed to provide housing for poorer people. They all were a minimum of three bedrooms and could be bought for 42,000 ringgits, the Malaysian currency. A ringgit is about a third of a Canadian dollar. So if you’re below a certain income level in Malaysia, you can buy a modern three bedroom apartment for around CDN$14,000. These developments went on for mile after mile.

We also passed a large plant manufacturing the Proton car, a Malaysian built car. The Proton company was a government operation at first but was later privatized. Cars, in fact, are plentiful in the country.

The highways are all tolled and our bus passed several on our trip. We also saw many motorbikes on the road and our guide told us that motorbikes under 100 cc are exempt from the tolls, so those small motorbikes are very popular there.

We finally arrived at Kuala Lumpur, a vibrant, modern city, lush with greenery at every turn. Its main industry, according to our guide, is computer parts. It is a high tech hub.

Part of vibrant Kuala Lumpur seen from the Observation Deck of the KL Tower

Our first stop was a Chinese buddhist temple in the middle of the city. Its up on a hill and our bus navigated some windy roads getting there.

The temple itself was gorgeous. Because Chinese New Year is coming up on Feb. 8, red paper lanterns were everywhere. In fact, our cruise ship has also been decorated for Chinese New Year.

Beautiful Chinese Buddhist Temple in Kuala Lumpur

The temple, in pagoda style, is colorful and elaborate. We had to take our shoes off to enter the worship area and we were impressed by the ornate ceiling as well as the three large buddha icons.

One of three giant buddhas at the temple

After visiting the temple, Janis and I wandered around a bit and came across a lovely garden with wateralls and two ponds filled with turtles. Buddhists release turtles into these ponds for good luck and long life.

Next stop was a short one at the King’s Palace. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy and the king is the nominal head of state.

After that, it was back on the tour bus for a meandering ride through a working class district of town. Lots of row housing here too, but older and not as pristine as the newer ones we passed on the drive in. What’s interesting is that almost every home has an air conditoner (it is very hot and muggy in this area), most homes have satellite dishes or antennas, and everyone hangs their laundry out to dry on the balconies. Some buildings were awash with laundry.

The trail ended at the Royal Selangor Pewter Company where we stopped for a tour. It is a large modern plant and displays a bit of the history of pewter making in Malaysia. Tin is widely mined in the area and it is the main ingredient of pewter, along with smidgens of copper and antimony.

One wall near the beginning of the tour showed colour slides of notables who have visited the factory, including the Prince of Wales, Bill Clinton and Martha Stewart.

Along the way we saw various artisans at work handcrafting artifacts. One woman spent all her time hammering dimples into the surface of a container shaped like a tin can revolving on a lathe. Bang! Bang! Bang! Just hammering away.

The tour ended at the gift shop, of course, as many such tours do. Many beautiful handicrafts were on display including a Star Wars collection – Princess Leia, Han Solo or Darth Vader stauettes in pewter. They were good sized pieces – six to eight inches long, polished to a nice shine, and going for 1200 ringgits each or about CDN$400. Outside was the world’s largest pewter tankard according to the Guinness Records Book.

Star Wars figures in pewter

We left this district for the center of the city, stopping for a short visit to the Petronas Towers. These world famous 88 story towers were the world’s tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004. They remain the tallest twin towers. (Are there any others?) The towers formed an integral part of the 1999 movie Entrapment starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The mighty Petronas Towers

We had hoped to go up the towers but the tours are booked at least a month in advance so it was a no go. But after a tasty buffet lunch at the Commodore Hotel, we went up the KL Tower, the fourth tallest communications tower in the world. It looks much like the CN Tower in Toronto but is a bit shorter. The observation level offers a terrific panoramic view of the city, including the Petronas Towers.

The tour ended, we took the bus back to our cruise ship for the next leg on our exciting holiday.

A few notes for tourists. Although the city is modern, some older places like the temple often have squat toilets and no toilet paper or paper towels for drying your hands after washing them. Ladies should wear skirts or dresses for this eventuality as pants are awkward. You should also pack a roll of toilet paper. Later in our trip we visited Penang and some of the washrooms had a faucet on the floor attached to a rubber hose beside the squat toilet, the hose be used in place of toilet paper. Ewwww! Be forewarned! Modern buildings have modern bathroom facilities and will usually have at least some western style toilets.

Also, while Malaysia is a multicultural society, it predominant religion is Islam, with large Hindu and Buddhist minorities as well as some Christianity from British colonial days. Our tour guide was, by Western standards, quite politically incorrect, making snide cracks about both the Chinese and the Indians in their society.

There is a strong animosity towards Singapore, which interestingly enough, used to be part of Malaysia. But unlike Quebec separatists in Canada and the Basques in Spain and France who want to secede from their countries, Singapore didn’t secede but was expelled by Malaysia over political differences. The largely ethnic Chinese Singaporeans have been disdained by many Malaysians ever since.

Finally, Malaysia, like Singapore, has very strict drug laws and the death penalty for many drug offences. While there are movements to decriminalize marijuana in Canada and the United States, bringing some into Malaysia could see you at the end of a rope.

But all in all, we loved Kuala Lumpur and would love to visit again for a longer period. It is relatively inexpensive and although we didn’t do any shopping, I’ve heard it is a shopper’s paradise.